Economic and Industrial Democracy

This paper examines the relationship between reductions in the length of the standard working week in Australian industry and employment and wages as they emerged in the period 1976-85. Reductions in standard working hours in Australia were seen by many as a means of reducing unemployment. The results obtained suggest that no general relationship existed between working time changes and employment levels, but rather varied between industries. The potentially divisive issue of the funding of work time changes is also examined.

Works council representatives have competing social definitions of what constitutes their rank and file. In this article these definitions are clarified in terms of target groups and externally available human resources: colleagues, clients, mandators and audiences. An elaborate policy is developed to find guidelines and proposals for improving the rank and file relationship, and to discover 'manageable' solutions to given problems. This also requires the specification of tangible goals for a rank and file relations policy in terms of the needs served and gains expected by the works council members themselves from increased and/or intensified contact with target groups. Four such operational goals are made explicit in this study: (a) enlarged participation; (b) mobilizing consensus; (c) mobilizing power and (d) solidarity. Their common denominator is a wish to stand less alone in confrontations with management. Problems in the rank and file relationship, however, may serve to cover up more serious problems in the works council-management relationship. This is discussed as the fear of taking over the initiative. Four common works council rituals, taken as ways of avoiding the overt acknowledgement of this fear to 'stand up for one's right', are discussed: the 'garbage can' ritual, the 'inadequate information' ritual, the 'Tom, Dick and Harry' ritual and the 'back to the rank and file' ritual. These may divert attention from the real issue: the capacity of the works council to act as vanguard in the representation of workers' interests vis-a-vis the management.

Cooperative support organizations have been increasingly recognized as an important part of developing integrated worker cooperative systems. This paper focuses on cooperative development agencies (CDAs), which have received public and private support mainly for the purposes of creating and retaining local jobs through cooperative development. This paper is a case study of two CDAs in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Association of Cooperative Enterprise (PACE) and the O&O Investment Fund. It examines the context in which they have developed, the interests involved, their structures and financing, and the roles they have undertaken.

Mondragon is known as a system of democratically structured producer cooperatives, yet the condition of women workers is only somewhat better, relative to men, than in capitalist or already existing socialist organizations. Three major factors appear responsible. First, waged or not, women have responsibility for the home. Second, a capitalist market devalues social goals. Third, and the primary topic of this paper, men control decisions about technology, commonly understood. As in other industrial settings, the manufacturing technology of the cooperatives, and much of their administrative apparatus, have origins in patriarchal military institutions. Engineering education, also with roots in military institutions, is one source of gender maintenance during times of technological transformation. This hierarchical organization of technology stands in contradiction to the ideology and core elements of cooperative structure.

On 8-10 April, 1987, a joint Dutch-Swedish symposium on work research was held in Amsterdam. The conference was sponsored jointly by Stichting CCOZ (The Netherlands) and the Swedish Work Environment Fund. It was chaired by Jacques Allegro (CCOZ) and Bengt Abrahamson (the Swedish Center for Working Life). In the proceedings of the symposium was the following speech by Dr Peter Westerholm, chief Medical Advisor to the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). His contribution provides a succinct and up-to-date presentation of the Swedish labour movement's position on questions related to work health and safety, and to research on these issues.